76 The Transitional Process of Meditation

Alan starts the session commenting on the importance of the sense of community and supporting each other. Emphasizing this, he explains a story of Ananda to illustrate that having spiritual friends is the whole of the practice. After the silent meditation and before entering into the third and final bardo that we will be focusing in this retreat, Alan does a recap from the beginning of the teachings to place in context the upcoming chapter. The overall theme is the decrease of grasping. If grasping is occurring the view isn’t there and one is not viewing reality as it is. There is a gradient in grasping from extremely coarse to extremely subtle. The aim of all these practices is to release all the layers of identification and grasping along the path. We make the segue to the next chapter on page 169 of the book Natural Liberation: the transitional process of meditation. Alan mentions that the prerequisite for the practices of the transitional process of dreaming is the achievement of shamatha and vipashyana, while the prerequisite of this next transitional process of meditation is the realization of rigpa. After that, comes the process of rigpa releasing itself from all concepts, grasping, veils and configurations. In this phase one gains mastery over pristine awareness. One can identify it and dwell on it for as long as one wishes without grasping and without conceptualization. This is where one moves to the mode that simply sustains the dzogchen view at all times, not doing anything other than resting in rigpa. At the end of the podcast Alan responds to two questions: 1.- When meditating in taking the mind as the path, a participant experiences a very continuous flow of images and wonders if this is an indication of grasping. Also he mentions that his appearances resemble those when he is falling asleep. 2.- A speculative question on a sravakayana arhat that realizes emptiness. Can he realize pristine awareness and attain enlightenment if he practices all the practices of dream yoga? Silent meditation cut out at 09:19 min